What Was Robin Williams Really Diagnosed With?

Robin Williams was misdiagnosed. Doctors told him that he had Parkinson’s disease and for the last year of his life, that’s what he believed. But, they were wrong. It was only after his death that doctors settled on a devastating diagnosis. With a career spanning decades, Robin Williams’ frenetic charm and his ability to jump between the hilarious and the heart-wrenching made him an unforgettable part of people’s lives. The bombastic performer was a far cry from the shy kid who grew up in Chicago. Williams was quiet and reserved as a child, but he soon figured out an easy shortcut to get the attention he craved, making people laugh. He soon became the class clown at school and at home he bonded with the family’s maid, often the only person around for him to talk to. The lack of attention from his parents hurt him more than he let on and as time passed, the pain only grew. Williams was adept at hiding it. He dealt with having his whole life upended before, so when his father decided to retire early and move the family from Michigan to California, 16-year-old Robin took a deep breath and prepared for another struggle at a new school. But this time he was in for a surprise. This was nothing like the stuffy schools he’d experienced before. The free-form environment was just what he needed. By the time he graduated high school, Robin Williams had established himself enough for his classmates to vote him funniest as well as least likely to succeed. He then enrolled in college to study political science, but before long he had no choice but to face the facts. After just a few months, he dropped out to pursue acting.

After 3 years of studying acting at a community college, Williams got an opportunity that many dream of. In 1973, he got a full scholarship to the Juilliard School, just one of 20 students that the advanced drama program accepted that year. He was among classmates like Kelsey Grammer, Frances Conroy, and Christopher Reeve. When he got a part in a Juilliard production of a Tennessee Williams play, both instructors and classmates had their doubts that he’d be able to pull off a serious role without cracking a joke. When the play opened, they got the surprise of a lifetime. Williams totally nailed the part, with Christopher Reeve saying the performance left him astonished. Juilliard had been a rigid space with a classical training style, which never suited Williams particularly well. Harkening back to his exciting move to California as a teen, the now 25-year-old went to San Francisco in 1976. Here, Williams honed his stand-up routine, but it wasn’t long before he took his act down the Pacific Coast Highway to Los Angeles. There, he became acquainted with the city’s dark side all too quickly. It didn’t take long for a TV producer to notice Williams during one of his stand-up sets. After a few bit parts, he got a cameo on Happy Days as a visiting alien named Mork. Had any other actor taken the quirky part, it likely would have been immediately forgotten. But Williams made a serious impression on both TV executives and audiences. The spin-off sitcom, Mork & Mindy, was a massive hit and aired from 1978 to 1982. This success gave Robin Williams a lot more opportunities in the stand-up world, including a string of HBO specials. But, while filming a sitcom demanded a regimented lifestyle, the world of comedy clubs only provided Williams more opportunities to dabble with drugs.

Williams had met Valerie Velardi in 1976 in San Francisco when she was working her way through school as a waitress. By 1978, they were back together and Williams hastily popped the question. They married in June that year. The one-two punch of Mork & Mindy and his stand-up specials had made Robin Williams one of the most famous men in Hollywood. Female fans were showering him with attention and he wasn’t always great at turning them away. In 1980, movie producers lured him to the big screen with a starring role in Popeye, only for the film to end up a complete and utter flop. In ’82, Williams had a starring turn in The World According to Garp, but behind the scenes, he was in the middle of a nightmare. Williams had forged a close friendship with fellow comedian John Belushi. The pair bonded over their careers as well as what came with it, namely drink and drugs. That is until the night they took it too far. Late one night in 1982, Belushi was holed up in his room at the Chateau Marmont with a woman, Cathy Smith. Robin Williams, among others, dropped by only to get weirded out by Smith and leave. The next afternoon, Williams got devastating news. Belushi had died of an overdose at some point during the night. The loss of his close friend was a wake-up call. He looked for healthier coping mechanisms and found some in running and cycling. In 1984, Velardi gave birth to the couple’s son, Zachary.

The pregnancy was one of the reasons Williams had quit drinking and partying, and Zach’s birth only confirmed that he’d made the right decision. In 1988, after 9 years of marriage, Williams and Velardi separated. Soon after, Williams began living with another woman. Her name was Marsha Garces, and she’d been Zach’s nanny for a couple of years before Williams had made her his secretary. It was, to say the least, not a good look. Eventually, Williams and Velardi began divorce proceedings. Some news that might have pushed them was Garces’ announcement that she was pregnant. Within a year, Williams went from married to divorced to married again, this time to Garces. But this time around, it seemed like he’d learned a lesson. Good morning, Vietnam! Wow! I’ll be back. Good morning, Vietnam was the movie that put Robin Williams on the map as a film actor, but it almost didn’t happen. After first being developed in 1979, studios passed the film around for many years before it finally landed on Williams’ lap.

After reading the script, he realized the movie would be the perfect platform for him to show the world what kind of range he was capable of. It became one of the highest-grossing films of the year, and it also netted Williams his first Academy Award nomination. Finally, after 7 years of acting in middling films, Williams had proved himself as a leading man capable of bringing in the box office receipts that studios wanted. He now had a lot more creative freedom in his career, and he used it to take on more dramatic roles like the one in Dead Poets Society. But he also found his niche in films that would attract a younger audience like Hook, Aladdin, and Mrs. Doubtfire, the type of movies that burned his voice and presence into the hearts of an entire generation. Long after their days learning their craft at Juilliard, Williams remained friends with Christopher Reeve, best known for his role in 1978’s Superman. Sadly, in 1995, Reeve was paralyzed after a horseback riding incident. For a man who’d spent most of his career playing a superhero, it was devastating. And Williams quickly realized that he needed to step up for his friend. Not long after the accident, Reeve got a visit at the hospital from an eccentric Russian man claiming to be a proctologist who said he wanted to do a rectal exam. It was, of course, Williams playing a prank. Reeve claims this was the first time he laughed following the accident and that it prevented him from sinking into deep despair. Williams had two children with Marsha Garces, Zelda and Cody. As a dedicated father of three, the idea of appearing in children’s movies appealed to him more and more. The Disney Renaissance was in full swing and they were willing to do anything to get Williams to voice the Genie in their adaptation of Aladdin. In order to woo him, Disney animated and lip-synced the Genie performing against a vocal track of Williams’ own stand-up comedy. He was so impressed that he signed on immediately with one caveat, that the studio not use his name or image for marketing. Disney ultimately went back on both promises and Williams was furious. While Disney didn’t use his name in advertising for the film, they did use his voice and character for toys and fast food tie-in deals. They also didn’t pay him any additional money for it. It soured Williams’ experience on the film and his relationship with Disney.

Aladdin was, of course, a huge hit and an instant classic. Williams’ unforgettable performance was an integral part of its success. He improvised most of the Genie’s lines, but this had an unfortunate side effect. The Academy rejected the Aladdin script as a candidate for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. Few expected a low-budget film written by two unknowns to make much of a splash, but when Goodwill Hunting came out, it was an instant success, in part because of Robin Williams’ performance. After two Oscar nominations without a win, the other being The Fisher King, Robin Williams won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Goodwill Hunting. It was one of the high points of his career, and the next few years were filled with more hits and accolades. It seemed like he was unstoppable, but behind the scenes Williams was hiding a dark secret. Since losing his friend John Belushi in the ’80s, it was like Williams had used his sentimental roles in kids movies and cathartic parts in dramas as a form of therapy. He kept up a frenetic pace between acting, charity work, and his family life. Finally, it all caught up to him and he relapsed. In 2003, he began drinking again. In 2006, he checked into rehab in Oregon. For nearly two decades, Williams and his wife Marsha had a relationship that went beyond husband and wife. They even formed a production company together. Williams’ relapse, however, put a strain on their marriage. In 2008, Marsha filed for divorce. The split devastated Williams. After all, he’d never really been alone before, and while he didn’t plan for things to happen the way they did, he wouldn’t be alone for very long. There are probably very few people who expect to fall in love at the Apple Store, but that’s where Robin Williams met his third wife in 2007 before his divorce from Marsha was even final. A woman named Susan Schneider spotted Williams and decided to approach him to say hi. They married in 2011. After a terrible few years marked by a bad relapse and divorce, it looked like Williams had found happiness again. Just two years into the marriage, he began to experience worrying symptoms. It began with stomach issues before devolving into trembles and insomnia. The symptoms, or perhaps the underlying cause, began affecting his mental health and he became anxious and paranoid.

Williams, his wife, and his doctors worked hard to figure out what was wrong with him. Finally, after a year of questions and few answers, doctors settled on a devastating diagnosis. They believed that he was in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, a brain disorder that causes shaking, stiffness, and difficulties with movement. Williams’ quick wit, intelligence, and rapid-fire joke-telling had defined not only his career, but his life. Now, due to this illness, he wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Sadly, the deterioration was quick and unrelenting. He did his best to cope with the worst of his symptoms, but in particular, fear and paranoia began to overtake him. Perhaps due to his troubling insomnia, Williams and Schneider kept separate bedrooms. On the morning of August 11th, 2014, she went to his room and found that he’d taken his own life. I hate to have to report this. The breaking news just in on CNN is that actor Robin Williams is dead at the age of 63. When doctors performed an autopsy, they made a chilling discovery. Williams’ health problems hadn’t been due to Parkinson’s. Instead, they found a massive number of abnormal protein deposits called Lewy bodies, which cause a form of dementia called Lewy body dementia, an illness whose symptoms include memory loss, hallucinations, insomnia, and other symptoms that can be confused for Parkinson’s.

In the wake of Robin Williams’ death, tributes poured in from fans, friends, and co-stars, as well as stories that those close to him had kept quiet for years. Lisa Jakub, who played Lydia Hillard in Mrs. Doubtfire, revealed that she was expelled from school after missing too many days while filming. Williams reacted by sending a letter to the school’s administrator. In it, he wrote that a student of her caliber and talent should be encouraged to go out into the world and learn through her work. While the letter didn’t persuade the school to change its decision, Robin Williams standing up for her became a formative experience in Lisa’s life. Bradley Pierce, one of the child stars of Jumanji, credited Williams with saving his life. He said that Williams had been a constant source of inspiration, motivating him to talk openly about his own struggles with depression. If you enjoyed this Factinate video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more incredible stories. Your support means everything to us. If you want to say in who we cover next, join our membership program through the link in the description for exclusive perks, and check out the videos on screen for more amazing Factinate stories.